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PC Zick

Trails in the Sand

Synopsis

Trails in the Sand follows environmental writer Caroline Carlisle as she reports on endangered sea turtles during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. As she delves into the story, she uncovers secrets about the past that threaten to destroy her family unless she can heal the hurts from a lifetime of lies.
Her journey reveals the truth behind mysteries that have plagued her family for three generations.
Lost journals, a fake tablecloth, and nesting sea turtles lead her to discover why her uncle committed suicide, why her sister developed anorexia, and why her mother only wanted acceptance from those she loved.
Caroline and her husband Simon discover love lasts despite decades of separation when he was married to Caroline’s sister. Caroline’s niece Jodi, caught in the crossfire of family tensions and lies, struggles to find a way to forgive the past so she can move into the future.
Trails in the Sand explores the struggles to restore balance and peace, in nature and in a family, as both head to disaster. Through it all, the ancient sea turtle serves as a reminder that life moves forward despite the best efforts to destroy it.

Author Biography

P.C. Zick describes herself as a storyteller no matter what she writes. And she writes in a variety of genres, including romance, contemporary fiction, and nonfiction. She's won various awards for her essays, columns, editorials, articles, and fiction. Currently, crafting fiction—mostly romances—occupies her time.
No matter the genre, her novels contain elements of romance with strong female characters, handsome heroes, and descriptive settings. She believes in living lightly upon this earth with love, laughter, and passion, and through her fiction, she imparts this philosophy in an entertaining manner with an obvious love for her characters, plot, and themes.

Author Insight

From the Author

During the real-life drama of BP's DeepWater Horizon oil spill, I served as a public relations director for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. I handled the media for the sea turtle nest relocation project that took place during the summer of 2010. At the same time, I was beginning a new relationship with a lost love from thirty-five years ago and was in the process of moving to Pittsburgh. Two weeks prior to the oil spill, twenty-nine miners were killed in a coal mine explosion in West Virginia, just a few hours from where I was moving. It all fell into place to write about the oil spill, the coal mine disaster, and a family facing disaster. Trails in the Sand explores the efforts to restore and redeem what has been damaged.

Book Excerpt

Trails in the Sand

1956 – St. George Island, Florida

Alex and Gladdy Stokley sat on the sand as
the reddish glow from the setting sun disappeared and left the
beach shrouded in darkness. The light of day remained only in
memory as the waves rhythmically beat upon the shore where the
brother and sister sat in silence.

“Moon’s rising,” Alex said half an hour
after the sun left the horizon. “See the light edging its way over
there? It’s going to be full tonight.”

The tide was going out as they sat on a
linen tablecloth that served as a blanket; they smuggled it out of
the family’s beach house as they escaped the rage of their father
an hour earlier. Alex produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes from
the front pocket of his white T-shirt. He cupped his hands to light
the match and then the cigarette. He pulled a second one from the
pack, lit it from the already glowing stick, and handed it to his
sister. Gladdy touched her brother’s hand before taking the
offering.

“Everything’s going to work out,” Gladdy
said. “You’ll see. Daddy will forget all about it once he goes back
to work on Monday.”

“He’s not going to forget, Gladdy. Not
this,” Alex said. “And neither will I. Do you think you can forget
it ever happened?”

“I can try. You can try. Let’s just put it
out of our minds as if it never happened. Please, Alex. We have
to.”

“It won’t work. It’s hopeless,” Alex
said.

“Look,” Gladdy poked her brother who was
older by ten months.

She pointed to the edge of the shoreline
only feet away from where they sat on the sand. The light from the
rising moon illuminated the beach in a soft white bath.

“It’s a loggerhead,” Alex said as a sea
turtle lumbered out of the ocean and laboriously began its march to
the dune line. “You can tell by its big head.”

“I bet it’s going to lay eggs,” Gladdy
whispered.

They sat motionless as the turtle, not more
than fifty feet away, pulled itself through the sand. The
loggerhead moved slowly but steadily, using first the front right
and then the left rear flippers to pull it forward. Then it
repeated the action with the other diagonal flippers. Its march
from the sea was distinct from the other species of turtles that
came ashore in Florida to lay eggs. The green turtle, Kemp’s
ridley, the leatherback, and the hawksbill also laid their eggs on
the beaches of the peninsula, but loggerheads were by far the most
numerous.

The female loggerhead, so graceful as it
floated and swam in the ocean, now tromped through the sand
dragging nearly 300 pounds of body weight. Every few minutes, it
would stop and dig its snout into the sand.

“She’s testing the temperature,” Alex said.
“That’s exactly how it was described in that book Daddy threw in
the trash tonight.”

Alex read any book he
could find about the ocean. Archie Carr just published a book about
the sea turtles, and Alex checked the book out of the library in
Calico, where the Stokleys lived, before they came to St. George
Island for the summer. He’d received special permission to keep it
for three months. When his father came to the dinner table that
night and saw Alex sitting with his elbows on the table andThe Windward Roadpropped up on his glass of milk, Arthur Stokley snatched the
book and walked out through the kitchen to the back porch and threw
it in the trash.

“We do not read at the table,” Dr. Stokley
said when he returned. “You have the manners of a heathen and the
sense of a moron. You never fail to disappoint me.”

“But that was a library book,” Alex
said.

“All the more reason not to have it at the
dinner table,” Dr. Stokley said. “You’ll have to tell the librarian
you lost it, and earn the money to pay for it.”

When the turtle reached the edge of the sea
oats and grasses protruding from the dunes, she swept the sand with
all four flippers before using her front flippers to push sand out
of a large area. The loggerhead kept rotating her body around the
area until a place big enough for her body indented the sand. She
used her cupped rear flippers as shovels and began to prepare the
cavity for the eggs.

After digging for what seemed like an
eternity to the teenagers, the ancient creature placed itself in
the body pit with its rear end just at the edge of the cavity. They
watched as three eggs dropped into the hole followed by a clear
thick liquid. The process was repeated over and over again.

“That’s mucus to keep moisture in the nest
while the eggs incubate,” Alex said. “Are you counting how many
eggs she’s laid? The book said they can lay up to 200 in one
nest.”

“I’m up to 82,” Gladdy said. “There’s 83 and
84.”

After counting 124 eggs, they watched as the
sea turtle filled in the cavity with its rear flippers and then
swept the area in an effort to disguise what lay beneath the
surface.

When the turtle finished her job, nearly two
hours after she came from the sea, she began the slow return back
to the ocean. Alex rose from the sand and followed the
loggerhead.

“Alex, what are you doing? You can’t go
swimming after dark – the undertow is too strong.”

“Did you know sea turtles always return to
lay their eggs on the beach where they were hatched?” Alex said as
he walked backwards into the sea following the trail of the female
loggerhead. “The eggs will hatch in about two months, Gladdy. Be
sure to come down here every night and wait for them to emerge so
you can help them go home. Remember 124 eggs and remember the
location.”

Alex turned toward the ocean and kept
walking until the sea engulfed him, and he went under.

“Alex, come back,” Gladdy yelled out over
the surf, but the only answer came from the sound of the waves
lapping the beach. “We’ll find a way.”

Gladdy pulled the corners of the tablecloth
up around her shoulders and waited for her brother to reappear. The
waves came back to shore time after time, but as she sat transfixed
in her spot on the beach, Alex never returned with them.